Call For Papers

The International Committee on Computational Linguistics (ICCL) is pleased to announce its next event, COLING 2018, to be held at the Santa Fe Community Convention Center, NM, USA, from 20-25th August 2018. We invite the submission of papers on original and unpublished research on all aspects of computational linguistics.

About COLING
The first COLING was held in New York in 1965, with the last iteration in Osaka in 2016. Throughout its history COLING has brought together researchers from across the field of Computational Linguistics.

With COLING 2018 we continue this tradition and welcome papers on all topics related to both natural language and contribution, with the expectation that all papers will include linguistic insight.

Towards the goal of attracting and selecting a high quality, diverse program, COLING 2018 invites papers of a broad variety of distinct types, detailed below.

Important Dates
Submission for mentoring: February 16, 2018
Final submissions due: March 16, 2018
Author feedback: April 20-24, 2018
Notifications: May 17, 2018
Main conference: August 22-25, 2018

Submission Instructions
We invite submissions of up to nine (9) pages maximum, plus bibliography. The COLING 2018 templates must be used; these will be provided in LaTeX and also Microsoft Word format. Submissions will only be accepted in PDF format. Deviations from the provided templates should result in rejections without review. Submit papers by the end of the deadline day via our softconf site; the timezone is UTC-12.

Types of Paper
We invite papers in the following categories, each of which is associated with a distinct review form.

COMPUTATIONALLY-AIDED LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS
The focus of this paper type is new linguistic insight. Originality could be in the linguistic question being addressed, in the methodology applied to the linguistic question, or in the combination of the two. It should be shown how results generalize, either by deepening our understanding of some linguistic system in general or by demonstrating methodology that can be applied to other problems.

NLP ENGINEERING EXPERIMENT PAPER
This type of paper tests a hypothesis about the effectiveness of a technique for a task. The hypothesis should be clearly stated, the testing methodology rigorous, and the experiment reproducible. Furthermore, a successful COLING paper of this type will include thoughtful error analysis and a clear explanation of how the results in the experiment relate to the hypothesis.

REPRODUCTION PAPER
The contribution of a reproduction paper lies in analyses of and in insights into existing methods and problems—plus the added certainty that comes with validating previous results or the information that certain results are not reproducible. A strong reproduction paper offers analysis and deepens our understanding of the methodology used or problem approached, helping practitioners choose techniques / resources.

RESOURCE PAPER
Papers in this track present a new language resource. This could be a corpus, but also could be an annotation standard, tool, and so on. Part of the contribution of a reproduction paper lies in the quality, accessibility and description of resources.

POSITION PAPER
A position paper presents a challenge to conventional thinking or a futuristic new vision. It could open up a new area or spur the development of novel technology, propose changes in existing research practices, or give a new set of ground rules. Creative and sound positions will do best, with well-defined visions opening up new areas of research.

SURVEY PAPER
A survey paper provides a structured overview of the literature to date on a specific topic that helps the reader understand the kinds of questions being asked about the topic, the various approaches that have been applied, how they relate to each other, and what further research areas they open up. A conference-length survey paper should be about a sufficiently focused topic that it can do this successfully with in the page limits.

Author Responsibilities
Papers must be of original, previously-unpublished work. The formatting template must be strictly adhered to and deadlines met. Papers must be anonymized to support double-blind reviewing. If the paper is available as a preprint, this must be indicated in the submission form but not in the paper itself. In addition, COLING 2018 will follow the same policy as ACL 2018 establishing an anonymity period (February 16-author notification) during which non-anonymous posting of preprints is not allowed. Also included in that policy are instructions to reviewers to not rate papers down for not citing recent preprints.

Papers that have been or will be under consideration for other venues at the same time must indicate this at submission time. If a paper is accepted for publication at COLING, it must be immediately withdrawn from other venues. If a paper under review at COLING is accepted elsewhere and authors intend to proceed there, the COLING committee must be notified immediately.

Multilingual Abstracts/Synopses
For the camera-ready papers, we will invite authors to provide a translation of the title and abstract and a 1-2 page synopsis of the paper in a second language of the authors’ choice. Appropriate languages include but are not limited to authors’ native languages, languages spoken in the authors’ place of affiliation, and languages that are the focus of the research presented.

Writing Mentoring Program
COLING 2018 is offering a writing mentoring program. Authors wishing to participate must submit an abstract by February 16, 2018 and a complete draft of their paper by February 23, 2018. Further information is available at: http://coling2018.org/writing-mentoring-program/